The team showed how sharp indie can be, and as Guy Somerset observed they looked like an awesome 1960s band.

Lawrence & Gibson deal with all aspects of publishing – even the printing and using the guillotine. As Thomasin observed, you get to experience “a really physical relationship with your cultural product”. Murdoch wants the writers to have a real sense of being in a collective, all the money goes back into books and:

We want to publish writer’s first experimental works.

Thomasin’s book Ad Lib is about reality tv. How long is it going to go on for? Until we’ve all been in it? She is interested in the formulaic repetition, the same bit of content being used over and over again.

There was discussion about New Zealand’s small independent presses – Hue and Cry, Giant Sparrow etc. They all have different styles. Murdoch reckons the hardback book is going to make a storming comeback (I do hope he is right):